Adding the flavor to food science

Northeastern University network scientists debunked the food-pairing hypothesis, which is based on the principle that foods sharing flavor compounds taste better together.

North Amer­ican and Western Euro­pean cuisines tend to use ingre­di­ents that share flavor com­pounds, while East Asian and Southern Euro­pean cuisines tend to avoid ingre­di­ents that share flavor com­pounds, according to a study by North­eastern Uni­ver­sity net­work scientists.

The find­ings — which were reported in the December edi­tion of the online journal Sci­en­tific Reports — appear to debunk the food-​​pairing hypoth­esis, which is based on the prin­ciple that foods that share flavor com­pounds taste better together.

“Some sci­en­tists in the mol­e­c­ular gas­tronomy com­mu­nity think foods with sim­ilar com­po­si­tions taste well together, but we found that it really depends on the region,” said coau­thor Albert-​​László Barabási, a Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor of Physics with joint appoint­ments in biology and the Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Science.

Barabási — who recently received an hon­orary doc­torate from the Tech­nical Uni­ver­sity of Madrid for his con­tri­bu­tions to the fields of sci­ence and engi­neering — is the founding director of Northeastern’s world-​​renowned Center for Com­plex Net­work Research (CCNR).

The team of researchers, including former CCNR post­doc­toral research asso­ciates James Bagrow, Sebas­tian Ahnert and Yong-​​Yeol Ahn, took a network-​​based approach to explore the impact of flavor com­pounds on ingre­dient com­bi­na­tions. They designed and ana­lyzed the bipar­tite net­work of links between ingre­di­ents and flavor com­pounds found in more than 56,000 recipes from three online repos­i­to­ries, including epi​cu​rious​.com, all​recipes​.com and menupan​.com.

Two ingre­di­ents were con­nected if they shared at least one flavor com­pound. On average, a pair of ingre­di­ents in North Amer­ican cui­sine shared 11.7 flavor com­pounds. By con­trast, a pair of ingre­di­ents in East Asian cui­sine shared an average of 6.2 flavor compounds.

Com­pared to a ran­dom­ized recipe dataset, North Amer­ican dishes tended to use ingre­di­ents with more shared com­pounds than expected by chance, while East Asia dishes tended to use ingre­di­ents with fewer than shared com­pounds than expected.

The researchers found that a small number of ingre­di­ents con­tributed to the food paring effect in each region. Some 13 ingre­di­ents in North Amer­ican cui­sine, including milk, eggs and butter, appeared in roughly 74 per­cent of all recipes.

“These ingre­di­ents played a dis­pro­por­tionate role in the cui­sine and con­tributed to the shared com­pound effect,” Barabási explained.

What’s his favorite food? “I like Hun­garian ethnic food, but I won’t reject a good steak or a good burger,” Barabási quipped.

About the Writer

Jason Kornwitz, AS' 08, has called Northeastern home since 2003. In his spare time, he enjoys playing sports, watching pretentious movies, and cooking kingly breakfasts. Follow him on Twitter @jasonkornwitz.

News@Northeastern is Northeastern University’s primary source of news and information. Whether it happens in the classroom, in a laboratory, or on another continent, we bring you timely stories about every aspect of life, learning and discovery at Northeastern. Contact the news team